Being stuck at home for weeks on end has sent homeowners’ interest in sustainable and green design through the roof.
This year, enquiries for registration for Homestar, the New Zealand Green Building Council’s rating of sustainable houses, more than quadrupled over last year says chief executive Andrew Eagles.
“In the year to the end of May, registrations for Homestar have gone from only 797 last year to 3300 this year.
“And we’ve had 28 [commercial] building owners register for Greenstar, up from 21 last year.”
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Eagles puts this down to people’s interest not only in reducing carbon, but also in improving their health and wellbeing.
“We’ve had a health crisis, so there will only continue to be interest in healthy homes.”
The big win this year for the Green Building Council is that some local authorities – starting with Auckland Council, but others are in discussion – are now adding Homestar ratings to the LIM reports on all properties.
“That starts to make this mainstream, it makes it really clear to New Zealanders whether a home is greener. Overseas evidence is that this can make a 3 to 9 per cent difference in house prices once there is recognition of the rating. We’ll be able to track that for similar homes in similar neighbourhoods with or without Homestar ratings.”
Eagles says that we’ll only be seeing more of severe climate-related problems.
The drought restrictions in Northland and Auckland have put the urgency of improved home water efficiency under the spotlight. Right now Eagles not impressed that councils, or their water bodies like Watercare, don’t reward homes built or retro-fitted to use their own water.
“If we are to get anywhere with our new climate, we need to think about this a lot more. This is a sign of what we’re going to see more of.”
“They don’t reward homes built as water efficient.”
Instead, councils are keen to impose a $12,000 or more infrastructure growth charge to new builds, rather than encouraging homeowners to fit tanks and reticulation systems to capture water at its source (and spare pressures on waste systems).
Vicki Niethe of Tanksalot, that supplies detention and retention tanks for homes (detention tanks slow the release of stormwater, while retention tanks store water for house or garden use) is similarly unimpressed with councils that make this difficult – sometimes illegal – in certain places so they can continue to collect revenue.
She has certainly seen an uptick of enquiries from homeowners wanting to use rainwater from their roof. With tanks starting at $500 and retrofitted systems to use the water in laundry or toilet ranging from $2500 to $10,000 (this requires a licenced plumber) she says client quickly see how they can save money.
Inquiries for solar power systems also grew over the lockdown. Solarcity, which uses an intelligent battery, that stores energy to use even when the sun isn't shining, had a 30 percent lift in daily enquiries from before lockdown, and a higher numbers of systems installed since level 2.
Chief executive Neil Cowie attributes that to a marked increase in the level of awareness from consumers about climate change and carbon emissions.
“News of the positive effects of lockdown, with better air quality reported in cities, clearer skies and the return of birdlife to urban areas spark[ed] curiosity about the effects of reducing their household’s emissions.
“In fact, with New Zealanders being confined to their homes, there has been additional scrutiny of their living expenses and outgoings, and more time to consider and explore alternatives,” he says.
And to really lower energy bills, Guy Shaw of Energy Architecture who designs passive houses for energy efficiency, says that his company was fielding calls through lockdown from people who had time to look at their living arrangements.
Shaw, who is on the boards of both the Passive House Institute and Air Permeability Testing New Zealand, that promotes the importance of airtightness and air permeability testing of buildings, says that there’s been a general shift in thinking that New Zealanders are paying for poor building quality with their wellbeing.
His associations are focussed on training up a skilled building work force who can actually make the buildings perform. Otherwise, he says, it’s just a “promise on paper.”
In the UK building performance is tested through the build so that it meets strict quality. Right now there are few contractors who can do this, but Shaw hopes that with the promised new building programme from Government that we will take a page from Germany’s lessons after the GFC.
There, as build volumes slowed down, contracters were trained to retrofit poor housing so that it performed better than new builds for air quality and tightness.
“We’ve got this enormous problem with our existing housing stock; we’re just tinkering around the edges. In 2050, 80 percent of today’s housing will still be there, so we’ve got to target existing housing now. We could redirect everyone’s attention to mass housing retrofit, not just to minimum but to German standards.
“It makes economic sense to have energy efficient buildings.”
